


A Shaky State of Grace

by NervousAsexual



Category: Left 4 Dead (Video Games)
Genre: Major Character Injury, Needles, One Shot, Overdosing, Which Goes Nowhere in Particular, this one's been on the shelf since 2014
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-07-02
Updated: 2017-07-02
Packaged: 2018-11-22 04:25:26
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,312
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11372535
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/NervousAsexual/pseuds/NervousAsexual
Summary: He doesn't know what was in those pills he took, but Nick does know one thing: he is not gonna die in this swamp...





	A Shaky State of Grace

He woke up in stages. First all he could see was a blurred rectangle of light, then a glow like moonlight off the snow, and he thought for a moment he was at home.

“Nick. Nicky. Nicholas.”

The hunting rifle cracking nearby brought him out of the illusion. A darkish blob formed against the light, swam for a moment, and became Rochelle, gazing out the door of the train car with her rifle hanging down from her arms. She turned and saw him looking, and smiled.

“You ready to get goin’?”

Slowly, of course, ideas returned. Jail. Outbreak. Hordes of undead. Plane crashes. The rural south and zombies in overalls.

Fuck. He shoulda just stayed asleep.

He glanced up and saw Ellis crouched beside him. Ellis had his hat pulled down low over his eyes but he was frowning real hard and looked scared.

"What’re you looking at?” he asked.

Ellis glanced down at him and gave him a watery smile. “Just thinkin’ how you shot the pilot.”

“Zombie, Ellis.” His head kept throbbing every time he breathed or blinked or thought about something. “He was a zombie.”

“To be fair,” Rochelle said, “he was.”

He glanced out of the corner of his eye and saw Coach standing over him with his arms folded. “How ya doing, Coach?”

“Not too bad, not too bad. You?”

A little dizzy. Stomach was pretty sore. Must have been the pills he took. Thought they were pain pills but he didn’t even bother reading labels anymore. Probably a mistake. “Good. I’m doing good.”

“That’s good.” Coach turned and looked off out the door. “It’s startin’ to get dark and we should probably find a place to hole up ‘til morning.”

“There’s cabins out there.” Rochelle peered through the scope of the rifle. “We might find some supplies in one of them.”

“Sounds like a plan.” Coach rubbed at a scab on his head. “Well, everybody gather up their stuff, and while we’re at it we should refresh our ammo.”

He managed to heft himself up on his elbows and had a look around. The train car looked cold and unappealing but it had walls and a roof, at least.

“Don’t look at me like that,” Coach said. “You think you can carry a gun?”

“Can I carry a gun? Hell yeah.” He winced as Ellis tried to help him to his feet and stopped in a crouch. “The question is, should I carry a gun.”

Rochelle handed him an SMG. “Hey, won’t know until we try, right?”

He took the gun and tried to give her a smile. “Yeah,” he said, his voice cracking. “Guess so.”

“Take a medkit too.” Coach tossed him one. “At least you can’t hurt anyone with that. Ro, I got these pills…”

As he tried to get his balance back it occurred to him they were awful quite for a moment. He glanced up and saw them looking at him with worried expressions painted across their faces. “What?”

“I got an adrenaline shot,” Ellis offered. “Couple frag rounds left over… handful of jerky.”

“We can look for more later.” Coach leaned out the door and had a look around. “I don’t like the look of that sky. Let’s get moving.”

Coach and Rochelle hopped easily from the train—he couldn’t believe how little they seemed to be hurting. Ellis helped him scoot the rest of the way to the edge of the boxcar and he thought he was going to fall down and die.

“’s a long way down,” Ro said.

Yeah, no kidding.

“We’ll catch ya,” Coach said. “Ain’t _that_ big a drop.”

“Push me and I’ll shoot you myself,” he said to Ellis, and let himself fall.

He only fell for a second and somebody—must have been Coach—caught him. Knocked the wind out of him for a minute but whoever it was put him right back on his feet.

“Don’t you go down again,” Coach said. “Do that and you probably ain’t gettin’ back up.”

He gulped in air—reeked of mud and decay—and nodded. “Don’t plan on it.”

Ellis landed heavily beside him and grabbed at the back of his jacket. “I can get him."

Nick didn’t know how Ellis was supposed to hold him up and fire his gun at the same time but, he thought begrudgingly as Ellis put his arm around his shoulders, it beat crawling in the dirt. Together they took the first few shuffling steps toward the gas station across the tracks.

There was a damn weird pressure in his belly that hadn’t been there before and he wondered if it might be the same feeling he sometimes got when he was fall-down drunk and was getting ready to have… an accident, for want of a better word.

Hell no, he thought to himself. Not in the middle of the goddamn apocalypse.

There was a cold wet breeze blowing through. None of the others seemed to notice. How the hell did they do that? With the hand that wasn’t hanging onto the gun he tried to hold his jacket closed. Felt like somebody punched a hole clear through his belly.

At last they reached the gas station, boarded up and dark. He looked out at the cabins in the distance and didn’t know how he was gonna make it that far.

“Some of ‘em aren’t in very good shape,” Rochelle was saying, surveying the cabins through her scope again. “That one there doesn’t have more than two walls on the entire thing. How the heck does it stay standing?”

“Find me one with four walls and I might never leave it,” he said, trying to make it sound like a joke, but suddenly Ellis butted in with one of his Keith stories and for once he didn’t have the heart to stop him.

“Ellis, sweetie, is now the time?” Rochelle asked. He’d have to thank her later, when he didn’t feel so much like lying down on the grimy concrete of the gas station and sleeping for a century.

Ellis made a sheepish noise. “Sorry. Just reminded me of the time…”

“I hear a smoker,” Coach interrupted. “Quiet, ya’ll.”

They moved again, this time from the gas station to the barn across from it. It looked dark enough, and quiet enough.

He tried to get his legs properly under him but as he started to move Ellis raised his gun and it went off twice and Nick gasped and his legs went out again and a zombie fell to the ground in the farthest corner.

“Sorry,” Ellis said. “Zombie.”

Coach went up to the zombie and smashed its skull with the butt of his shotgun. “Not no more, he ain’t. Hey, frag rounds!”

They were getting too invested in this, Nick thought. Like kids in a candy store where the candy could blow your fingers off and the other kids wanted to eat your goddamn brains.

“Great,” he said. “Frag rounds. Can we stop for a bit now?”

“We can’t stop here,” Rochelle said. She was looking through her scope again. “There’s cabins right there, with doors and everything. That’s gotta be safer.”

“What d’ya think, Nicky?” Now they were all looking at him. “Can ya make it to the cabins?”

He wanted so much to just sit down, put his face in the dirt and lay there. “Yeah, whatever.”

So they did walk a little farther, past the tumble-down shack Ro had pointed out earlier. His legs didn’t seem to want to work right. Ellis didn’t say a word but they kept falling behind.

“ _Now_ can we stop?” he asked when at last, at last they reached what looked like a decent, non-zombie-infested cabin. Whatever those pills were he took must have been kicking in, because he didn’t hurt much. It was just too bad he couldn’t move his legs anymore.

“Yeah.” Rochelle went in and had a look around and came out none the worse for wear. “There’s a little loft in there. Zombies shouldn’t be able to reach it. This is actually a pretty good place to hole up.”

“Good, great. Help me up there and I’m gonna sleep off the rest of this apocalypse, okay?”

It took a boost from Coach and Ellis dragging him up the ladder from above but they got him up there. It was a good place, Ro was right. A nice big double mattress with sheets and blankets, a twin mattress, and three or four sleeping bags laying around. He collapsed face-down onto the twin mattress and decided that was that.

“This is mine now,” he said.

“Whatever, boy, have at.” He heard Coach crawling up after him. Somebody dragged one of the sleeping bags over him. “I’m going to have a look around and see what they got for supplies around here. You comin’, Ellis?”

“I’ll stay put,” Ellis said.

He pulled the sleeping bag up over his head.

“I’ll go with you, Coach.” Ro this time. “Ellis, honey, why don’t you watch the door, make sure we don’t get any unexpected visitors.”

“What kind of…? Oh, you mean zombies. Yeah, I can do that.”

The loft creaked and the ladder groaned and when he clicked on his flashlight he saw they were gone. God, he’d missed having a space to himself. That and mattresses. He’d missed those too.

“Best of luck,” he called after them. He sounded a little drunk, he realized, even though he hadn’t had a sip in weeks. What a waste.

“See you in a bit, Nick,” Rochelle called.

He didn’t think it was worth answering but after a bit Ellis called up to him.

“Nick? Hey, Nick, you okay up there?”

“Yeah, I’ll just… check my eyelids for pinholes. Be back with you in a bit.”

“Yup.” Ellis’ voice was from somewhere down below him. The window, maybe. “Sounds like a good idea.”

* * *

“Well, shoot,” Ellis said when they returned bearing a big army-green sack stuffed with food. “Looks like Christmas came early.”

“There’s more out there,” Rochelle told him. “But it’s all in glass jars and we were afraid they’d break.

“How’s, uh…” Coach gestured tactfully up at the loft.

“Nick? Uh, he’s good, I guess. Hasn’t said much.”

"I’ll check on him,” Rochelle offered. She went back to the ladder and started up before turning to squint at them. “You guys leave some of that food for me now, you hear?”

“Still haven’t seen that smoker,” Coach said, turning to look out at the growing darkness. “Must be getting’ smart and figurin’ out how to hide.”

“Maybe he’s friendly,” Ellis said, and Coach just laughed.

"If only we were that lucky."

“Um, Coach?”

“Yeah, Ro.”

“He’s not breathing.”

Nobody said anything while they tried to figure that out in their heads.

“He’s not what now, Ro?”

“He’s not breathing. Nick’s not breathing.”

“Move.” Coach elbowed his way roughly past Ellis and started up the ladder. “Let me see. Ro, turn on a light.”

Her flashlight clicked, and there was Nick, on his back now, not moving, not breathing, looking grey. The sleeping bag was twisted around his legs but pushed off his torso.

“Shit. Nicky. Nicholas.” Coach shoved him and received no response. He ripped Nick’s shirt—Nick would have killed him if he had been breathing so that only proved it—and put his ear down against his chest. Nothing. Not a heartbeat, nothing. “Goddammit.” He straightened up and pounded a fist onto Nick’s sternum then listened again. Still nothing. “Ellis. Gimme your adrenaline shot.”

“What?” Ellis stood at the base of the ladder, arm wrapped around it.

“I said give me the shot. Now!”

He handed the shot up and Coach opened it and without stopping to think about it he jabbed it as deep as he could into Nick’s chest and hoped to god he was doing the right thing.

He tossed the shot aside and listened again. Still nothing… or no, he did hear something. He felt for a pulse on Nick’s neck and caught the slightest little flutter. “Oh thank god. C’mon, Nick. Don’t you dare die on me…”

Nobody said a word and they listened and they listened and finally Nick groaned. He didn’t say anything, he didn't move or open his eyes, but it was enough for a deep collective breath.

Ellis stepped up onto the lowest rung on the ladder, then up, and up again. “You done that before, Coach?”

Coach laughed bitterly. “Done what? I ain’t done shit.”

“Well…”

“He’ll be lucky if he comes out of this with the same amount of brain damage he had going in.”

“Coach,” Rochelle said softly, “it’s gonna be okay. We’re gonna be okay.”

“We’re up shit creek without a paddle,” Coach said. He sat back onto the double mattress. “We’re so far up shit creek there ain’t even a creek anymore.”

“But we’re not gonna just give up.” Rochelle turned her flashlight away, shining the beam down onto the guns and the pills and the medkit that Nick had discarded. “Look.” She picked up the SMG and showed him. “Frag rounds.”

“Are you tellin’ me to shoot him? Because that’s what it sounds like.”

“No!” Rochelle and Ellis both shouted and then looked nervously at each other.

“I know he’s not always been easy to get along with,” Rochelle said. She nodded down at Nick. “But he does have a point about one thing. We haven’t come this far to give up now. We’re not gonna die in a swamp.”

“Yeah,” added Ellis. “Come on, Coach. We got food, we got a house…” He waved a hand around. “We could live here if we wanted to.”

“I’ll make you a deal, boy. If we’re not gonna die in a swamp, we’re not gonna live in a swamp either.”

“That’s fair,” said Ellis. “That’s fair, for sure.”


End file.
